In 1874, on Molteno's insistence, he agreed to take the office of Chief Justice of the Cape Colony - a job he performed with great dedication and skill until the Act of Union in 1910.

Altogether, he served as Chief Justice for 40 years, with "an ever-growing reputation of the highest character for independence, legal ability, and irreproachable impartiality.

His reserved and sensitive personality, together with a weak physical constitution and his lack of outward charisma, made him ill-suited to the rough world of politics.

[3] However his academic ability, progressive thinking, huge range of intellectual interests and driving work ethic served to make him peerless in the judiciary.

[8] He was admitted to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1897,[9] and in 1910 he was raised to the peerage as Baron de Villiers, of Wynberg in the Province of the Cape of Good Hope and the Union of South Africa.